Frankenchevy's Monster

[Dr Frankenchevy]

Sup! I was out looking for a decent technical forum and stumbled in here; pardon me if this is the wrong place for these questions.

I am the proud owner of a 1983 Chevy C-10, otherwise known as the Cheyenne 10. Arguably one of Chvrolet's most hideous truck bodies, I still like the old beast because it's in very good shape (hardly any rust, imagine that!) and it is very CHEAP to repair and maintain.

Alas, just two days ago, my creation experienced a tragedy. The transmission bell housing, supposedly able to withstand monstrous torques and twists, somehow cracked. And I don't mean a little crack, either. I mean a San Andreas fault, King Kong's hairy butt crack that runs from the lower front right corner of the torque converter inspection plate to a point almost 180 degrees around the housing. The transmission is done.

So I went out looking for another one. Instead of a trans, I found a whole vehicle. To shorten the tale up a bit, here's what I found:

A short wheel base van, 1981 model, completely driveable, but not registered and without title, which holds within its bowels the following equipment:

a 1969-1979 series 350 CI V8
Decent aftermarket headers
A Holley Truck Avenger 670 cfm carb (basically a 4150 with side-hung floats)
- additionally, someone installed a bell-tower high rise breather and
removed the metering block from the secondary barrels. GIMME FUEL!!!!
An Edelbrock Performer RPM dual plane intake
a 400 series transmission
a 10 bolt rear end with 3.83's inside
a Reese hitch
brand new shocks
fairly new drive shaft

- the preceeding items cost me the sum of 500 greenbacks -

and a whole BUNCH of junk in the back, presumably free of charge

Now, the engine in this baby is -clean-
I mean, the wiring, the hoses, the belts, the seals, everything is tip top. And it runs like a scalded dog! I put a battery in the van and it fired up with no problem. The oil is clean, the trans fluid is a healthy color, and the coolant is its usual neon puke green. The soft plugs and valve cover gaskets have been recently replaced, so I know that some sort of internal work was done. I believe it has been rebuilt.
I plan on putting all this stuff in my short base half ton (except the junk!) My questions are many, but I'll address the most important ones first.

1- What sort of performance can I expect from this engine and driveline? A couple buddies of mine say it should be pushing right below 400 horses with the equipment that is visible. Are they right?

2- I know that the intake is pushing the envelope for that engine, if not overstepping it. Can a 350 support that carb/intake combination without a cam?

3- Does a single core radiator, albeit a very large one, have enough cooling capacity to support this engine?

I honestly think the man who sold this van to me stole it somewhere, or had no idea what he was looking at. Otherwise he would have sold that stuff for what it was worth! The intake and carb alone are worth what I paid for the whole van! I asked him why he was selling it so cheap, he said, "You'd be surprised what folks give away when the city keeps finin' em for leavin' it on the side o' the road two years." Sometimes the best deals are found completely by accident.

OK, that's enough for now. I get a little long winded with this stuff. I'll shut up now.

Take it easy...

Dr Frankenchevy

[jcp123]

400 horses is entirely too optimistic...My dad's 351 Cleveland pushes 400, and it took some pretty good heads to get it there. What you have is a van that'll startle the missus from the light, though. If you can, unhooking all the smog crap should help it out a little, too.

The intake is fine, I run an RPM intake and a 600 on my 302 and have no driveability issues. The RPM intake is a fine design that retains very good low end torque. But if you can, ditch the Holley, my dad runs the 670 Street Avenger on his Mach and it gives him nothing but trouble. I highly recommend Edelbrocks - tune it and forget it.

For cooling, that radiator is pushing it. I wouldnt run that with anything less than a 3-row.

[Dr Frankenchevy]

Well, today marked the first step in the great struggle to create a Creeper...

My room mate and I pulled the engines from both the candidate and donor vehicles today and ran into a few things you all might find interesting:

1- The engine in the van was NOT a 350. It is a 1969 327. To those of you who do not know, the Chevy 327 is pretty muvh a 350 with a shorter stroke. So maybe I won't eat too much fuel after all...

2- My drive shaft is about 3 inches too short due to the shorter tailshaft on the 400 that was in the van, so now I have to go get it lengthened. Pain in the ass.

3- If you ever try to remove a motor from a van with a larger V8 in it (most of those little vans were built with straight six engines) make sure you set your engine hoist hook as close to the intake as possible. If this means removing the carb, DO IT. You'll save yourself a LOT of hassle. I really don't know what psycho mad scientist decided to put this motor in this van in the first place, but I now understand the reason they decided to scrap it without removing the engine first. That thing was a pain in the ass!!!

That's all for now. I'll give you all an update tommorrow and let you know how the beast runs!

PEACE

Dr Frankenchevy

[jcp123]

Turst me it'll eat fuel. Especially if it doesn't have overdrive, which I don't think it does...

[Dr Frankenchevy]

MUHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

The beast is alive!!! I finally finished it out. Exhausts, wiring, the works. I took it out on the road a little while ago to see how it would do...

Lemme just say that when I stopped I had to pull the seat cover out of my butt. Pucker factor in that rig is about 8.0. The truck jumped up and ran off like a scalded dog when I pushed it to the floor, quickly accelerated to about 75 and cruised past several little noisy imports. Mongo was very pleased.

Here are a few more snags I ran into in the final stages of sewing this thing together:

1- The driveshaft: if you ever want to put a short tail TH350 or 400 series transmission in a 1980-1983 chevy shortbed C-10, the length is 59-60 inches, depending on the size of your U-joints and yokes. Took me about 3 days to find one.

2- The wiring harness in the van was a hell of a lot shorter on the starter side than the one in the C-10. It wouldn't hurt to either transp[lant the one out of the donor (if you need to) or go buy one from an aftermarket vendor. I suggest Painless.

3- Exhaust system on the van did NOT mate up to the truck. The crossmembers are different. I had to get a guy to bend me some tubes and install my own cats, then had him weld it all up and lay a set of Dynamax 1280 series mufflers in it. It all dumps out either side just in front of the back wheels, mainly because straight pipes would have cost me an additional 100 bones (Incidentally, if you value your eardrums, DO NOT drive a beast like this around with just the long headers for an exhaust system. I still can't hear myself breathe).

I made another connection today, an old man who said he could help me out by putting a medium cam in the engine so I can really eat people for breakfast. He also offered to let me audition to be a driver for his drag racing team. Sweet!

Well, that's all for now. Once I get the truck cleaned up and the engine looking decent I'll post some pics here for you guys.

PEACE!

Dr F.

[Dr Frankenchevy]

PS- the sigle row radiator is doing a bang up job. The engine consistently runs at 180 degrees, only fluctuating when I push it to get up a hill or hold it in the floor for extended periods of time. Maybe that monstrous 8 bladed fan has something to do with it... hmm...